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Agent Orange on Okinawa - The Smoking Gun: U.S. army report, photographs show 25,000 barrels on island in early '70s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Jon Mitchell
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During the Vietnam War, 25,000 barrels of Agent Orange were stored on Okinawa, according to a recently uncovered U.S. army report. The barrels, containing over 1.4 million gallons (5.2 million liters) of the toxic defoliant, had been brought to Okinawa from Vietnam before being taken to Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean where the US military incinerated its stocks of Agent Orange in 1977.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 10 , Issue 40 , September 2012 , e2
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2012

References

Notes

1. The full document, “An Ecological Assessment of Johnston Atoll”, can be accessed from the U.S. Army Chemical Materials Activity homepage here.

2. For a concise overview of the campaign to ban Agent Orange see Philip Jones Griffiths, “Agent Orange - ‘Collateral Damage in Viet Nam”, Trolley Ltd., London, 2003.

3. For a more detailed explanation of Operation Red Hat, see: Jon Mitchell, “Military defoliants on Okinawa: Agent Orange”, The Asia-Pacific Journal, September 12, 2011.

4. The full text of the V.A. ruling is available here.

5. From interviews with author conducted Summer 2012. Plus see this.

6. For an account of Okinawan NGO Citizens’ Network for Biodiversity's June 2012 meeting with Okinawa Prefecture see here.

7. See for example Fred Wilcox, Scorched Earth: Legacies of Chemical Warfare in Vietnam”, Seven Stories Press, New York, 2011.

8. See: Jon Mitchell. “U.S. Veteran Exposes Pentagon's Denials of Agent Orange Use on Okinawa,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol 10, Issue 17, No. 2.

9. See for example: Jon Mitchell, ‘Agent Orange on Okinawa - New Evidence,’ The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol 9, Issue 48 No 1.

10. See this.

11. Ibid.